What is a Christian Entrepreneur?

Just the words together, “Christian” and “Entrepreneur”, suggest a much higher and nobler purpose than simply a Christian who is trying to make a living by operating a business. So high, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine someone following Jesus Christ (who had no possessions of His own) and also seeking to build wealth.

Sometimes I wonder if the word entrepreneur adequately describes the person who follows this higher purpose. Eventually we end up with the same bottom-line concerns, processes and procedures, but, how we get there has two very different beginnings.

An entrepreneur’s main concern is the making and accumulation of wealth. That’s the end goal, the primary focus. Everything about the business from the customer to the office should promote this goal.

A Christian Entrepreneur’s primary goal and concern is to bring glory to God and be faithful stewards of His possessions. As stewards, God expects us to make a profit on the talents and gifts He has entrusted us with, but this isn’t our main responsibility.

Being a Christian Entrepreneur requires a calling!

God plants seeds in His people’s heart and designs them with a purpose – they are called and chosen.

Being a Christian Entrepreneur requires recognition!

Christian Entrepreneur’s recognize that it all begins, and ends, and consists with God. It’s this recognition of His Sovereignty that allows us to go left when He tells us despite all of our experience telling us to go right.

It’s that unwavering trust that following His Word will always win out in the end. It’s the acceptance that He has unlimited resources at His hand to bring about His will trough us, if we don’t stand in the way.

This recognition is why we react differently when we are wronged, when we are slandered, when we aren’t paid, how we treat our employees and competitors, how we deal with our customers and run our business.

So what is a Christian Entrepreneur?

To sum it all up in one definition it would be:
A sincere born-again follower of Jesus Christ who has been called and gifted to express the love of God and the glory of Jesus Christ through entrepreneur ventures recognizing that they are stewards of the accumulation of prosperity from these ventures and entrusted to use this (His) prosperity according to God’s perfect will following the Holy Spirit’s leading and the Word of God.